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  • Will Armageddon Be Joe Biden’s Final Legacy Regarding Russia?

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    When the Soviet Union dissolved in late 1991, the world seemed poised for a new, more peaceful era no longer haunted by the fear of a nuclear Armageddon. The principal successor state from the wreckage of the USSR was a noncommunist Russia that was intent on becoming part of the democratic, capitalist West. President George H. W. Bush and his top advisers exercised considerable diplomatic skill managing the twilight years and ultimate demise of the Soviet Union. Their core achievement was to gain Moscow’s assent to Germany’s reunification and membership in NATO. The implicit tradeoff (unfortunately never put in writing) was that NATO would not expand beyond the eastern border of a newly united Germany.

    The contrast between the benign end to the original Cold War and the current status of relations between the West (especially the United States) and Russia could not be greater or more alarming. NATO’s meddling in the armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia has become an outright proxy war for the Alliance. As NATO’s leader, the United States has pushed a series of extremely dangerous escalatory steps. The latest provocation is the decision by Joe Biden’s administration authorizing Ukraine to use long-range U.S. Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) that are capable of striking at least 190 miles inside Russia. Moscow has responded by adopting a new nuclear doctrine warning that the use of such missiles by NATO’s Ukrainian proxy would mean that Moscow is officially at war with the U.S.-led alliance. Perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin is bluffing, but the risk of a nuclear collision between NATO and Moscow now appears to be very high.

    It is bitterly ironic that the decision to let Ukraine use U.S. missiles that might trigger World War III has been made by the lamest of lame duck U.S. presidents. At the 59th minute of the 11th hour, the leaders of the Democratic Party pressured Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. They did so because the evidence of his cognitive decline had become undeniable. However, his hand-picked successor, Kamala Harris, then proceeded to lose the presidential election to Republican nominee Donald Trump.

    To say that the Biden administration has no mandate to make such a crucial decision involving war and peace would be a monumental understatement. In fairness, though, the current foreign policy crew is not solely responsible for fouling-up relations with Russia and provoking a new cold war with nuclear implications. That “achievement” has been a bipartisan effort taking place over more than 3 decades.

    Toward the end of George H. W. Bush’s administration, public opinion polls in Russia showed that nearly 80 percent of Russians held positive views of the United States. In the late stages of the Bill Clinton administration, nearly the same percentage held negative opinions.

    It was hardly a surprising development. During his years in office, Clinton and his Russian-hating advisers (especially UN ambassador and later Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) antagonized Moscow on multiple occasions. Washington went out of its way to attack Russia’s long-standing religious and political clients, the Serbs, as the Yugoslav federation disintegrated. However, the Clinton administration’s decision to expand NATO to include Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, struck the biggest blow to East-West relations.

    Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, continued and intensified the policy of provoking and antagonizing Russia. Subsequent rounds of NATO expansion brought U.S. military power to Russia’s immediate neighborhood by adding such new members as the three Baltic republics, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Most provocative of all, Bush pushed to add Ukraine to the Alliance. Although Germany and France temporarily blocked immediate moves to make Ukraine a member, Washington’s ultimate goal was quite clear.

    A rising number and volume of warnings against making Ukraine a NATO asset also came from Putin and other officials. Washington and its key European allies ignored those warnings, but it became clear in 2014 that the Kremlin was not bluffing. When President Barack Obama and key European leaders helped overthrow Ukraine’s generally pro-Russia president and install a regime subservient to NATO, Moscow struck back emphatically, seizing Ukraine’s strategic, but majority Russian populated, Crimean Peninsula.

    Relations between the West and Russia continued to deteriorate thereafter. In the autumn of 2021, the Kremlin proposed a new relationship with the West that amounted to Russia’s minimum demands. Those demands included a guaranteed neutral status for Ukraine – thus foreclosing the prospect of Kyiv’s eventual membership in NATO. The Kremlin also sought the withdrawal of advanced U.S. weaponry from the easternmost members of NATO. It amounted to an ultimatum, and when the Biden administration treated Moscow’s demands with contempt, the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That offensive, combined with the decision by the United States and its allies to impose severe economic sanctions against Russia, ignited an ever-escalating military crisis.

    It is uncertain whether President-elect Trump intends to end the dangerous impasse with Moscow. Contrary to the partisan myth that Trump has been Putin’s puppet, his actual policies during his first term were consistently hardline. One can hope, though, that he has fully understood what a disaster Washington’s love affair with Ukraine has become for both countries. Restoring cooperative bilateral relations with Russia is essential for global peace.

    Alarmingly, however, Trump might not get that opportunity, even if he wishes to back away from the beckoning abyss. The lame-duck Biden administration still holds power for nearly another two months, and, if administration leaders are so inclined, that is more than enough time to plunge the country into nuclear war. Biden’s conduct in recent weeks, especially authorizing Ukraine to attack Russia with U.S.-supplied, long-range missiles, is beyond reckless. Biden’s legacy is already bad, but it could become even worse.

    https://ronpaulinstitute.org/will-armageddon-be-joe-bidens-final-legacy-regarding-russia/


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  • The Real Problem with Biden’s Age

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    I was only a little surprised by Biden’s debate performance, and on first glance thought it just mediocre, certainly not cause for a crisis. But that’s because I consume too much alternate media, and had seen the endless string of viral clips of Biden falling down the main stairs of Air Force One (and being reassigned to the shorter crew stairs in response.) I’ve seen the memes and loops of his many gaffes, and the awkwardly long pauses where Joe just drifted off when he is no longer next to puppet master Jill to cue him. So the debate was little surprise to me. But for those whose media diet is slim, and whose images of Biden were relegated to highly edited MSM clips, many saw Biden in-the-real for the first time and it shocked the hell out of them. It was clear what many had said before to little belief: the Emperor had no clothes.

    Some 85 percent of voters thought Biden was too frail to be president. That massive number of Americans must include almost everyone who has cared for an aging relative and knows the signs: mixed up words, forgotten details, the long, empty stares where conversation used to be. His debate performance and other stumbles were symbols of a deteriorating man, not signs of a bad night. Biden’s boast he faced a cognitive test every day was belied by the results: endless war in the Ukraine with no path to victory, endless war in Gaza where the Israel mocks Biden’s red lines, and the economy, with intransient inflation eating away at paychecks. Biden failed at the real meat of the job, which is not being discussed, never mind just the bad optics. His own stubbornness and the games played around him weakened America at home and left it exposed and vulnerable to forces abroad.

    Which brings us to Biden Problem Two, actually a Kamala problem, the fact that the White House, Democratic Party and Joe himself have been, abetted by the MSM, lying to us for years about the condition of first Candidate Biden and then President Biden. We now can surmise the 2020 campaign from his basement by Biden, supposedly run that way because of Covid, was actually a subterfuge, a way to spoon feed good images and sound bites of Biden to the public and hide his ongoing condition. Clever propaganda, like Franklin Roosevelt appearing to “stand” at public events when in fact in private he was wheelchair-bound due to polio. The Wall Street Journal reports congressional leaders were worried about Biden’s mental state back in 2021. Democrats covered it up. That’s who Kamala is beholden to, leaving the Democratic base to consist of Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries.

    Kamala’s problem is not with the undecided voters, it is with Democratic voters. How can they believe her after such malarkey? Indeed, it was only a week before the debate the White House was claiming video of Biden wandering off and/or falling down was the result of nefarious editing and visual trickery (that line of argument dissipated quickly post-debate.) Then it became a dead solid accepted fact that Biden was senile, and Democrats were paralyzed. No one listened to anything except questions about Biden’s ability. No one seemed to ask but likely thought about why this was hidden from the public. Kamala begins her campaign shouting into the wind “Believe me!” Why should anyone? Did she not see Biden’s deterioration and keep silent about it? Meanwhile, the Democratic party, which has accused Trump of being anti-democracy, is running a candidate who never won a primary, removing the loser via some back room process as transparent as chocolate pudding. Remember all the moaning about the many political and Constitutional crisis Trump was to unleash? Here’s a real one.

    You’ll hear no mea culpa from the MSM about remaining quiet over what they knew from their own close contact with the President, as they remained silent after lying about Russiagate and Hunter’s not-Russian laptop. They saw the real Joe Biden and instead of informing the American people, acted as agents of the Democratic party to help cover things up. In an era where everything about Trump is fair game and then some (if there’s no lead story today make one up!) the media was silent about Joe. This is the same MSM which for four years of Trump bleated emptily about the 25th amendment and how Trump was unstable, unqualified, and mentally ill.

    To make things worse, the MSM pivoted twice in a two week span, jumping on Biden to quit the race like school cafeteria bullies (Bill Maher called them “Mean Girls who smelled blood in the water”) and then to spew out funereal-like dirges about Biden the statesman when he did drop out (Biden clung to the Resolute desk like a Titanic survivor and then left office with the same grace he showed in Afghanistan.) It was almost as if someone was directing the whole affairs from afar. Maybe it was this guy — MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner admonished the home team corporate media to ramp up its negative coverage of Trump while not “ginning up” reasons to criticize the Vice President. Kirschner, on YouTube, urged the media to prioritize critical coverage of Trump while treating Harris better than it treated Biden following the June debate.

    The so-called defenders of democracy abetted a cover-up and a coup in plain sight. Credibility? Why should anyone believe them about anything Kamala-related going forward?

    Source: The Real Problem with Biden’s Age – The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity


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  • U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” President Biden then rushed to sign it into law.  

    The perhaps ironically named “Reforming Intelligence and Security America Act (RISAA)” does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). RISAA not only reauthorizes this mass surveillance program, it greatly expands the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. The bill’s only significant “compromise” is a limited, two-year extension of this mass surveillance. But overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US.

    Section 702 allows the government to conduct surveillance of foreigners abroad from inside the United States. It operates, in part, through the cooperation of large telecommunications service providers: massive amounts of traffic on the Internet backbone are accessed and those communications on the government’s secret list are copied. And that’s just one part of the massive, expensive program. 

    While Section 702 prohibits the NSA and FBI from intentionally targeting Americans with this mass surveillance, these agencies routinely acquire a huge amount of innocent Americans’ communications “incidentally.” The government can then conduct backdoor, warrantless searches of these “incidentally collected” communications.

    The government cannot even follow the very lenient rules about what it does with the massive amount of information it gathers under Section 702, repeatedly abusing this authority by searching its databases for Americans’ communications. In 2021 alone, the FBI reported conducting up to 3.4 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data using Americans’ identifiers. Given this history of abuse, it is difficult to understand how Congress could decide to expand the government’s power under Section 702 rather than rein it in.

    One of RISAA’s most egregious expansions is its large but ill-defined increase of the range of entities that have to turn over information to the NSA and FBI. This provision allegedly “responds” to a 2023 decision by the FISC Court of Review, which rejected the government’s argument that an unknown company was subject to Section 702 for some circumstances. While the New York Times reports that the unknown company from this FISC opinion was a data center, this new provision is written so expansively that it potentially reaches any person or company with “access” to “equipment” on which electronic communications travel or are stored, regardless of whether they are a direct provider. This could potentially include landlords, maintenance people, and many others who routinely have access to your communications on the interconnected internet.

    This is to say nothing of RISAA’s other substantial expansions. RISAA changes FISA’s definition of “foreign intelligence” to include “counternarcotics”: this will allow the government to use FISA to collect information relating to not only the “international production, distribution, or financing of illicit synthetic drugs, opioids, cocaine, or other drugs driving overdose deaths,” but also to any of their precursors. While surveillance under FISA has (contrary to what most Americans believe) never been limited exclusively to terrorism and counterespionage, RISAA’s expansion of FISA to ordinary crime is unacceptable.

    RISAA also allows the government to use Section 702 to vet immigrants and those seeking asylum. According to a FISC opinion released in 2023, the FISC repeatedly denied government attempts to obtain some version of this authority, before finally approving it for the first time in 2023. By formally lowering Section 702’s protections for immigrants and asylum seekers, RISAA exacerbates the risk that government officials could discriminate against members of these populations on the basis of their sexuality, gender identity, religion, or political beliefs.

    Faced with massive pushback from EFF and other civil liberties advocates, some members of Congress, like Senator Ron Wyden, raised the alarm. We were able to squeeze out a couple of small concessions. One was a shorter reauthorization period for Section 702, meaning that the law will be up for review in just two more years. Also, in a letter to Congress, the Department of Justice claimed it would only interpret the new provision to apply to the type of unidentified businesses at issue in the 2023 FISC opinion. But a pinky promise from the current Department of Justice is not enforceable and easily disregarded by a future administration. There is some possible hope here, because Senator Mark Warner promised to return to the provision in a later defense authorization bill, but this whole debacle just demonstrates how Congress gives the NSA and FBI nearly free rein when it comes to protecting Americans – any limitation that actually protects us (and here the FISA Court actually did some protecting) is just swept away.

    RISAA’s passage is a shocking reversal—EFF and our allies had worked hard to put together a coalition aimed at enacting a warrant requirement for Americans and some other critical reforms, but the NSA, FBI and their apologists just rolled Congress with scary-sounding (and incorrect) stories that a lapse in the spying was imminent. It was a clear dereliction of Congress’s duty to oversee the intelligence community in order to protect all of the rest of us from its long history of abuse.

    After over 20 years of doing it, we know that rolling back any surveillance authority, especially one as deeply entrenched as Section 702, is an uphill fight. But we aren’t going anywhere. We had more Congressional support this time than we’ve had in the past, and we’ll be working to build that over the next two years.

    Too many members of Congress (and the Administrations of both parties) don’t see any downside to violating your privacy and your constitutional rights in the name of national security. That needs to change.


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